Documents from the reliquariumThe Lookout Bar

Ted Godwin: The Tartan Years 1967-1976Carleton University Art Gallery

This is not a recordingPaintings by Valerie RoosArtguise

Are you tired of feeling tired from sitting in the same position every day and staring at a computer? Is your clock set to "hibernate" with winter almost upon us?

If you're looking for some ideas and information about becoming more physically active Animal Athletes may very well fire the starter gun on a whole new lifestyle for you.

Using members of the Wild Kingdom as analogies, Animal Athletes is a do-it-yourself style exhibition. The "art" is not on the walls. You, your fellow viewers and the featured brothers and sisters from the animal world constitute the art.

Divided into two sections, a warm-up area and a "stadium", photographs, charts, exercise equipment and interactive displays encourage visitors to push their physical envelopes through weightlifting, gymnastics and track and field events. Equipment includes a 17-metre racetrack and a balance beam (nailed to the floor).

Although it's primarily targeted at younger viewers, adults will find a treasure house of information about creating a healthier lifestyle. The exhibit includes all the essential information and equipment for self-assessment, from weighing scales, heart rate monitors, and instructions on how to calculate your own body mass index - the ratio between your height and weight. The eight sections - Stretching, Health Centre, Food Court, Aerobics Studio, Racing, Jumping, Weightlifting, and Gymnastics - unmask the vital areas to examine in the quest to safely establish and maintain optimal health. For instance, explaining the importance of hydration, a chart provides precise details on how much water to consume before, during and after physical activity.

Animal Athletes pulls out examples from the natural world to inspire and revive our interest in our own bodies. After all, we are animals too. This presentation gently removes the sting from what may be fairly intimidating for some adults who have developed a little too constant a relationship with furniture. The humble ant, for instance, is dubbed "the Gold Medal Winner in Weightlifting" since it can lift over 52 times its own weight.

In the warm up section, next to the heart rate monitors an interactive set up allows viewers to hear and compare their own readings with the heartbeats of elephants, whales and other animals. A long line of photographs and stats of animal athletes slithers, swims and crawls along the length of the 17-metre "Olympic" sprint event. On the go, a porpoise can slip across that finish line in 1.113 seconds, while a giant tortoise eases across in 3 minutes 38.57 seconds.

The link between athleticism and survival in the animal kingdom is underscored throughout the exhibition. In addition to being able to hunt for food, athleticism will determine an individual's ability to escape from danger. Getting the lowdown on what some animals go through to "get dinner" seems several light years ahead of what for many of us has become a nightly routine—walking a few steps to the cupboard or freezer to reconstitute or microwave some pre-packaged processed food.

Indeed the overall impression given by Animal Athletes is how unnatural and self-destructive we are becoming in a world revolving around high technology. With the main sponsor being the Canadian Olympic Association, it's an invigorating interactive example of something being done to encourage everyone to reap the benefits of being more physically active—not just the athletic elite.

Continuing around town....Benefiting the AIDS Committee of Ottawa, interdisciplinary artists Nichola Feldman-Kiss' exhibit continues at The Lookout. Featuring digital prints, its ongoing production can be seen on Artengine's web gallery (The URL is listed with exhibition information.). Every day, Feldman Kiss scans something and posts it on the site.

"It is a stream of consciousness offering of words and objects amalgamating the memory triggers that mark individual passages and weave a social net," the press release reads. " The Reliquarium hovers at the boundary of intimacy, voyeurism and banalities of everyday life, past and present. It is an in your face social commentary addressing sexuality, technology, disease, subtle propaganda and personal rituals of becoming."

Calgary artist Ted Godwin's investigation of tartan continues at Carleton Art Gallery. Primarily known for work produced in the 1950s as part of the group of abstract painters called the Regina Five, Godwin went on to make monumental images inspired by tartans and their design.

Godwin is interested "in the processes of nature, including human nature, and in the problems of how to live in our world," writes curator Ann Davis. The Tartans are "a search for order without a loss of spontaneity."

Finally, the interference of inanimate objects in human communication and connections is examined in Valerie Roos latest series of paintings.

"In our most vulnerable state we are nude—with a cell phone," the press release observes. "Do we think communication is achieved with only one of the five senses being utilized? We've reduced ourselves to simply hearing, but who is listening?"